Arm Floaties for Hurricanes
How Churches Can Help Through Divorce
“Grief requires physical recovery the same way an injury does — rest, attention, appropriate pacing, and time” - John Andersen, PhD
We’re all ‘good’ people staring at a broken marriage with an empty toolbox.
They keep asking when the reception line begins, where to put the potato salad, and if it’s going to be an open casket so they can warn the kids. For starters, it’s a toss-up if courthouses even allow reception lines, and secondly, no one’s cornered the market on divorce caskets. Good news: Meal Trains are good for two weeks.
Tires screech off leaving the last tater-tot casserole steaming on the front steps next to a freshly purchased set of bright blue arm floaties. What an odd gift for the kids in September? No, the sticky note’s addressed to you. It’s hurricane season.
Notifications hibernate and calls dry up as funeral flowers expel their petals. According to your church, the grieving process should be wrapping up right about now, but your storm is just beginning. Tides are rising, winds are snapping. Arm floaties need inflating. Friends hold up prayer hands from the shore watching in horror as you’re ripped out to sea alone. A journey absent itinerary.
Divorce leaves you alone, fighting for air as rogue waves smash against any hopes of rescue.
No one is coming to save you. Why?
We love plush couches, Doordash, streaming, and robotic lawn mowers. We don’t mind funeral pain. Go to the service, pay your respects, raid the meat and cheese trays, and be back to normal life in a few hours. We like mourning in the moment. Anything disrupting our rhythm of comfort for extended periods is strictly prohibited. People don’t like soaking in pain that isn’t theirs. Even Christians.
Beyond time limits, divorce is a powder keg few will take a crack at diffusing.
Letting someone drown is easier than saying the wrong thing. Let that irony sink in. Our idea of helping is doing nothing. Most people aren’t trained counselors and humans have a general fear of misspeaking into highly sensitive waters. Saying the wrong thing could unleash emotions we’re not equipped to handle. Who wants to be blamed for a blow up? Silence is the safe bet.
Fear of someone’s divorce pulling yours down is real. The McDermott/Brown University study found that friends with shaky marriages pull away the hardest. A men’s small group was meeting to support one of them going through divorce. After the meeting, his friend admitted “I’m afraid my marriage is next.” Their wives were friends. Safety meant keeping distance. Struggling marriages encounter increased distancing in the pews.
Why do churches struggle with addressing divorce? Simply put, there’s no script. No clear roadmap to resolution. It’s not that churches are purposefully avoiding divorce. Why risk addressing what can’t be fixed? Plus, Sunday’s coming. We’re hardwired for Sunday adrenaline shots, not ongoing loss. No one is dropping off casseroles seven months into a custody dispute. Churches are equipped for funerals. Divorce is a death that won’t die. There isn’t a playbook for walking people through long term emotional pain like that. We avoid what we can’t resolve.
A few months ago, a coffee shop shut down that had an easily recognizable brand in town. Multiple locations, trendy look, great coffee. Now closed. When the closure was announced on social media, patrons were shocked, some angry. Their favorite coffee shop shuttered. The coffee shop none of them ever went to.
This is known as the Bystander Dynamic. Everyone assumes someone else is buying coffee. Same in church. They’re drowning in divorce, surely someone’s throwing them a lifeline. Silence confirms the crisis is handled. No noise, no problem. The mistake is the assumption. No communication. No follow-up. No one’s taking care of it. No one hears the person screaming underwater.
What is the script? What’s the twelve step plan for divorce recovery? How long should it take? These are the wrong questions. Divorce doesn’t have steps, it has phases. Each with their own undetermined timeline connected with grief. There is a death, just no funeral. “Are we here for the long haul?” That’s the right question.
This is where churches get stuck. They don’t like messy unknowns. Quickly checking for offramps instead.
Offramps lead to late night snacking.
Comfort food at 1:00 am eases so much stress but prevents us from seeing our toes. We know we shouldn’t shove Ben & Jerry’s in our mouths after midnight, but no one is there, shouting into a bullhorn, pointing at unseen extremities. There’s a massive gap between knowing what we should do and actually doing it.
We should do something; we don’t know what, so we don’t do anything. That’s how people handle divorce. Churches follow suit.
Churches need guidance, encouragement, and accountability. They need a life coach.
Life coaches drive simple, consistent contact. It’s a phone call saying I see you. I care about you. They ensure follow-through. Someone is going to their house and watching a movie or dragging them out for a walk. Quick texts saying, “I’m praying for you right now, what can I pray for?”, are the difference. You don’t need a PhD in Psychology, just a willing heart. A heart tuned in to the ultimate life coach. The Holy Spirit. Respond to His nudges of reaching out.
People in crisis aren’t looking for answers from their friends. They crave presence. It’s the lifeline. John Andersen, PhD puts it this way:
“So, the most powerful thing you can offer isn’t advice. It isn’t a solution. It’s steady, faithful presence.”
A phone call, a knock on the door tells them they’re not forgotten. Consistent presence. That’s the script. Any church can run it.
Abandonment leaves leaves people alone in the storm. Coping in the self-sabotage of isolation. Grief compounds. Trauma playlists repeat. Each loop lands harder. Fantasy spirals. Negative thoughts plunge into the Mariana Trench. That phone call could make the difference. They’re gasping for it.
Modern church culture sets its sights on Sunday. You won’t find a sign out front proclaiming, “Come Grieve with Us!” We treat mourning like a glitch in the system, a virus. We look at long term suffering as weakness or losing a spiritual battle. Those who grieve beyond the expiration date are glared at through a lens of contempt. They’re an inconvenience. A buzzkill. People don’t hop around as much singing “It is Well.” That’s a testimony quickly scrolled past.
Determined engagement is the key. It’s not an arm floatie. It’s a lifeboat.
Simple contact could spark the greatest awakening. Loving broken people to health may be the next wave of the Spirit. Imagine a church laying out the red carpet to the broken, hurt, divorced. No matter the denomination, creating space for healing could be the breakthrough.
Keep calling. Keep knocking. Be present. Don’t quit. Don’t let go.
That’s the script. Let the Holy Spirit narrate.
Thank you for giving my material a few moments of your time. If you know of struggling through divorce, please share this content. We want to be a voice speaking life and hope to people going through one of the greatest storms in life.
References
Aknin, L. B., & Sandstrom, G. M. (2024). People are surprisingly hesitant to reach out to old friends. Communications Psychology, 2, Article 34. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44271-024-00075-8
Andersen, J., & Evans, J. (2026, October). Who will love me now? God’s embrace after divorce. XO Publishing. (Forthcoming)
Barna Group. (2025, December 19). Marriage and divorce in 2025: Five trends shaping today’s families. https://www.barna.com/trends/marriage-divorce-trends-2025/
Burke, B. L., Martens, A., & Faucher, E. H. (2010). Two decades of terror management theory: A meta-analysis of mortality salience research. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(2), 155–195. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352321
Crosswalk. (2016, September 12). What the divorced Christian wants you to know. https://www.crosswalk.com/family/marriage/what-the-divorced-christian-wants-you-to-know.html
Latané, B., & Darley, J. M. (1970). The unresponsive bystander: Why doesn’t he help? Appleton-Century-Crofts.
McDermott, R., Fowler, J. H., & Christakis, N. A. (2013). Breaking up is hard to do, unless everyone else is doing it too: Social network effects on divorce in a longitudinal sample. Social Forces, 92(2), 491–519. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot096
Norton, K. (2025, August 11). When friends abandon you during grief: Why it happens and how to cope. Kelly Norton Coaching. https://www.kellynortoncoaching.com/blog/when-friends-abandon-you-during-grief
Restored Lives. (2022, September 23). Why do friends disappear after divorce? https://www.restoredlives.org/why-do-friends-disappear-after-divorce
Stroebe, M., Schut, H., & Stroebe, W. (2007). Health outcomes of bereavement. The Lancet, 370(9603), 1960–1973. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(07)61816-9
There’s a lot of wisdom in here that extends far beyond just divorce.
One of the biggest pieces is the ongoing support. We’re already bad at being supportive in the heat of the moment. We’re even worse at being there for people as time goes on.
That’s exceptionally tragic because that’s often when people need it most. As the endorphins wear off and everyone else gets back to their normal life, those struggling are left alone.
Even worse, we often shame people for not being “over it” yet.
Excellent piece, here. When speaking to people about funerals/death, I often point out that the hard part for the family is not the first six days. Those days are filled with activity and arrangements, and while there is mourning, the families and friends are surrounded by mourners and well-wishers.
The hard part for the families is six weeks, or even six months later, when everyone else has gone back to their “normal lives” and the family still has that same gaping hole, but now with no one supporting them or mourning with them.
You point out the same is true with divorces here. Convicting for those of us in ministry, and essential for the church to understand in a society where the fragmentation of marriage grows ever more common. Thank you.